Tech Blog

Hi All,

A chap called Michael Grafnetter has created a brilliant PowerShell script to check password hashes in Active Directory against a list of simple or common passwords.

This is great to encourage users not to use obvious passwords, for example if a company is called Contoso then you’d want to encourage users not to use Contoso1 etc.

Here’s how:

Download the software:

https://github.com/MichaelGrafnetter/DSInternals/releases/tag/v2.22

Copy the DSInternals directory to your PowerShell modules directory, e.g.

Launch Windows PowerShell.
(Optional) If you copied the module to a different directory than advised in step 4, you have to manually import it using the Import-Module .\DSInternals\DSInternals.psd1 command.

Next create a text file called passwords.txt and fill it with passwords you’d like to scan for, example:

Then here’s an example script:

First set the password txt file.

Then set the Domain Contoller, in this case DC1

Then set the distinguished name of the OU and sub OUs you can to scan:

Note ” and ‘ are not showing up properly,

$dictionary = Get-Content passwords.txt | ConvertTo-NTHashDictionary Get-ADReplAccount -All -Server DC1 -NamingContext ‘dc=adatum,dc=com’ | Test-PasswordQuality -WeakPasswordHashes $dictionary -ShowPlainTextPasswords -IncludeDisabledAccounts

My Windows 10 client wouldn’t connect to our Direct Access severs today, kept just getting Connecting

So to troubleshoot I’d recommend:

Checking your internet connection:

Now its worth running some PowerShell commands to get the actual error:

This likeley means your proxy is in the way of your connection.

Check the settings:

Get-NetIPHttpsConfiguration

Double check your internet connection

Test-NetConnection

I think its time to check the proxy settings:

Check if you can get to a website via IE and try via another browser such as Firefox.

If you cant then check if your proxy is off:

Now check the windows 10 proxy and the Netsh proxy:

Windows 10, turn it off:

Check the netsh and then turn it off or reset it to IE:

When reset should look like this:

Failing that reset the IP Helper in services.msc or reboot:

The netsh settings fixed it for me, the reason I’d set it was to allow PowerShell out to the internet for Exchange 365 work.

Change the DNS from a list of servers:

As per the title, find the DNS addresses from a text list of servers:

To add send as permissions from the existing permissions on a mailbox you can use this script:

All you need to do is specify the username twice:

So We had a shared mailbox that was originally opened in Finland and as such the inbox was named postilaatikkoon and sent items was named Lähetetyt.

So I thought I’d jump into OWA and change the language there, well it turns out that has nothing to do with Folder names.

So after some research I found I could use:

But the mailbox is shared so doesn’t have a enabled user to logon with so I found this Exchange PowerShell command:

Job done.

To connect to Exchange and use powershell use this command:

Before I get started this is not referring to standard Distribution Groups, this email refers to the groups that can be created in the newer version of Office 365 that allow a “Lync-esque” conversation feature but with added functionality, such as reviewing previous messages when added at a later date.

In most environments this would be a great feature, workplace and alike, however in environments like  schools it can lead to some administrative troubles as there is no, current, way to administrate the groups once created as they are hidden to the admin unless viewed within the mailbox/OWA of the user doing the creating.

In this particular case these groups needed to be, A: removed manually, and B: disabled from future creation.

First you have to log in to the exchange mailbox via PowerShell, so have your admin credentials ready, once you are in and are ready to make changes, this is the command to run;

You can create a new policy and apply the above change to it, then set that policy as the default for your users/groups.

Please see this article for a much more in-depth overview of the feature and how to disable or utilize it.

If you have any questions please email me.

So today I was trying to running some cross domain PowerShell commands on Exchange but kept getting the following error:

Which basically means the Domain Controller your referencing can only see your sub domain and nothing higher.  So to resolve run this before the command:

Today a client noticed several thousand failed secuity attempts on their Terminal Server:

So after filtering the Event 4625 in event viewer I found I couldnt export the Source Network Address. So came up with this handy powershell script to export the IP to a csv: